As Long as You Need: Permission to Grieve

In the eight years author J. S. Park has served as a chaplain at a hospital designated a Level 1 Trauma Center, he has witnessed hundreds of people die, their deaths caused by accidents, violence, and diseases.

In explaining his role, Park writes, “Maybe you’re not sure what a hospital chaplain is. After eight years of wearing a chaplain badge, I wish they’d tell me too. But my usual reply is that I’m a cross between a priest and a therapist. I’m a thera-priest.”

In his work, Park discovered a truth about grief that broke every myth he once believed: “Grief, it seems, is not about letting go, but about letting in.”

Park explores losses of spirit, mind, body, and heart with clarity, raw honesty, and compassion. As he shares the stories of his patients, their families, and communities, and the implications of their losses, he also unearths his challenging childhood, coming-of-age experiences, and woundedness.

Park hopes to impart three things to his readers: “One: Your loss is yours and nobody else’s. Two: Your loss is not something you get over, but something you carry everywhere you go. And three: You can take as long as it takes.”

Especially compelling is Park’s candor about his faith struggles. Through many dark nights of the soul, Park struggled with the implications of what it means to believe in God and serve him. After much anguish and inner conflict, he notes, “When I consider what it is to have faith, to clutch the edge of hope in the middle of our suffering, this is how I believe we experience God entering, how I hope to enter too: with hands, feet, eyes, and the heart of the divine in a room at the corner of the universe. Saint John said it like this, ‘No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.’ If we are made for each other, then our separation is a wound, and when we meet, it is grace that enters there and mends us together.”

Park’s poetic prose, vivid writing style, profound insights, and intense love for suffering people combine to make this book a must read for people experiencing grief, pastors, counselors, lay church leaders, and anyone else involved in pastoral care. (Thomas Nelson)